Visualizing The World

While reading the "Horizon 2010" report, I came across a reference to Worldmapper.  Worldmapper is a "visualization too that redraws maps based on the data being displayed.  For instance, on a world map showing population, countries with more people swell while those with fewer people shrink." (Horizon 2010  report, New Media Consortium and Educause Learning Initiative, 2009.)

 

I poked around on the website and, it's pretty interesting.  For example, the map depicting deaths caused by infectious and parasitic diseases, Africa and the Indian subcontinent are giant bulges and Europe and North America appear almost emaciated.  These maps are very interesting and could be the source of some enlightening discussions with your classes.

For Francoise (and others!)

At the social networking session on Friday's prof dev day, one of our administrators asked if there was a Reader's Digest for web 2 applications. I responded that it's people who do what I do: surf the web, play with the toys and read, read, read all day. However, what I didn't tell him was that I have a couple of resources that do function a bit like the Reader's Digest for me. The many times aforementioned Free Tech For Teachers (source of today's post), Wes Fryer's "Moving at the Speed of Creativity" and "Digitzd"are among my favorites.

So, to today's topic, Youpublisher.  Youpublisher is a free, online service that turns your pdf's into online magazines.  Very cool, and a fantastic way for students to publish their work.   Francoise, one of our French teachers, has her French IV students do a literary magazine, and we usually find a way to put it up on the web so parents can see it.  This takes it one step farther!  Even better, she can embed the code into her SWIFT page and parents can read the publication right there. 

Come to think of it, our Journalism teacher was asking about something similar just the other day!

Copyright and Fair Use

Thanks, again, to Free Tech For Teachers and it's wonderful author Richard Byrne (@rmbyrne on Twitter) for bringing to my attention a very good presentation on copyright for educators done by Wes Fryer.  I've embedded it below, but here are a couple of suggestions to add to your RSS feed, and/or your Twitterpeeps: If you don't subscribe to Free Tech or Wes' blog, At the Speed of Creativity you are missing out of some really good resources.  Wes' slideshare presentation runs close to an hour, but it well worth listening to.

Copyright for Educators

View more documents from Wesley Fryer.